Computational Scientist, Differentiable Physics

Periodic Labs

  • Menlo Park, California
  • 6 days ago

    Highlights

    Build and extend differentiable solvers for continuum simulation (including but not limited to fluid dynamics), especially multi-scale and multi-physics problems. Code-level experience building or substantially modifying PDE solvers, numerical methods, or differentiable simulations.

    Numbers & Facts

    LocationMenlo Park, California
    Websitehttps://periodic.com

    Description

    About the Role

    Periodic Labs is building AI systems that can simulate physical science, verify predictions, and train on the full scientific method. We are looking for a Computational Scientist to build differentiable, accelerator-ready simulations for industrially relevant continuum-physics problems.

    You should be equally comfortable with governing equations, solver code, and deep learning. We are open to expertise in any area of continuum-physics, with at least some experience in fluid dynamics. You will work on building simulation capabilities in challenging, data-limited domains requiring a mix of physics-based and empirical approaches.

    What You’ll Do

    • Build and extend differentiable solvers for continuum simulation (including but not limited to fluid dynamics), especially multi-scale and multi-physics problems.

    • Implement numerical methods from equations and papers, and diagnose convergence, stability, and modeling failures.

    • Combine simulation with deep learning for surrogate modeling, learned physics, inverse problems, parameter estimation, and optimization.

    • Use automatic differentiation and modern accelerators with JAX or PyTorch to make simulations scalable and trainable.

    • Validate models against experiments, trusted benchmarks, or high-fidelity simulations.

    • Create datasets and evaluations to guide the development of LLMs to accelerate and automate these tasks.

    You Will Thrive Here If You Have

    • A PhD or equivalent research experience in applied mathematics, computational science, physics, engineering, computer science, or a related field.

    • Code-level experience building or substantially modifying PDE solvers, numerical methods, or differentiable simulations.

    • Deep expertise in at least one continuum domain, with breadth across domains or a demonstrated ability to learn new physics quickly.

    • Meaningful experience building, training, and evaluating deep-learning models for physical systems.

    • Strong Python and software-engineering skills, especially JAX, PyTorch, Julia, or C++.

    • Experience applying simulation to realistic scientific or engineering problems, not only clean academic benchmarks.

    • A startup mentality: ownership, good judgment under uncertainty, and enthusiasm for building from scratch.

    Strong Candidates May Also Have

    • Experience with fluid dynamics plus another continuum domain, or with multiphysics and multiscale modeling.

    • Expertise in adjoint methods, implicit differentiation, differentiable programming, or scientific optimization.

    • Experience accelerating scientific software on GPUs or TPUs.

    • Contributions to scientific open-source software used by others.

    • Experience connecting simulation to experiments, engineering decisions, semiconductors, or autonomous workflows.

    Mechanics

    • Minimum education: Bachelor's degree or similar experience

    • Location: Menlo Park, CA (Soon: San Francisco, too)

    • Compensation: $250,000-350,000 + equity

    • Visa sponsorship: Yes, we sponsor visas and will do everything we can to assist in this process.

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